So as some of you know, I work as tech support for the College Writing Program at Berkeley. Our department is all Macintosh, so finding good software can sometimes be expense. Fortunately, there are a number of sites that list freeware Mac programs. One of the ones I like is FreeMacWare, a blog spotlighting free Mac Programs. They’re also having a contest where you write about five apps you’ve found on their site. I was able to find some good programs including:

Firefox– It’s not as good as it is on the PC, but it has the best web compatiblity with web sites and the extensions can’t be beat.

VLC– Quicktime can’t open every video file, so it’s up to VLC to do the job. And a heck of a job it does.

Witch– Command + tab and Expose are great, but I think Witch is better. I like being able to cycle through all of my windows, even the minimized ones, which is what Witch allows me to do (among other things).

Mactracker– I can look up the technical specs for any Mac model possible. Very useful.

Nvu– Why pay so much for Dreamweaver when I can get WYSIWIG and CSS editing for free? And it’s pretty good code too.

I like a variety of other programs too, but these have been the most useful for me so far.

Not that it hasn’t been done before, as Matt Haughey had an article on using Movable Type for all sorts of sites.

Of course, nice websites can be built with WordPress as well, like California Connected. They even allow trackback. I wish I could find the blog post that talks about why they chose it over Movable Type.